Format arguments to have nested structures start on a new line instead
of inline to make it easier to see where the structures starts and what
structure it is.
Validate messages received on the controller from hosts and control
nodes before handling or forwarding them. This should prevent
performing actions that are not allowed by the role system and block
simple attacks such as spoofing the source address of a message.
Split up the action of registring an event or request data class to be
decoded by the Link class and the action of registring a handler for
those requests and events. This moves the validation work from Link
instantiation time to startup initialisation which makes logic errors
fail on startup instead of failing instantiation of the link when a
connection attempt is made.
Additionally implement a partial validation logic for messages received
using the newly refactored message registration. This unfortunately
ended up merged with the registration refactor.
Reverse the direction of the API for sending messages from
messageDefinition.send(link, { content });
to
link.send(new MessageClass(content));
and convert all message definitions to use the JSON serialisable class
pattern and explicit registration of message handlers, along with a
end-to-end based routing of messages instead of link to link.
The experience I gained from the existing way messages were defined and
sent over links was that it was difficult to understand for people
unfamiliar with the system. The automatic registration of message
handlers ment that code was being called as if by magic from nowhere
with no easy way to discover it. The manual forwarding and rules for
what can be sent where and how obscured its working.
The use of pure JSON as both input and output from message handlers made
it tedious to work with. Data had to be manually converted between the
program representation and the over the wire format, which made handler
code unplesant to write. Particularly because the over the wire format
used snake_case while the program code uses camelCase for variables.
The idea behind the decision to do it this way was to make it more clear
which data came from the wire and which from the program, and while this
worked it didn't make message handlers any nicer to write.
The direction of the API and magic registration of message handlers also
meant that a future migration to TypeScript would be troublesome. While
it may be possible to implement, the degree of TypeScript magic required
would go starkly against the principle of keep it simple stupid.
By refactoring to using the JSON serialisable class pattern most of
these issues go away. There is no longer a need to distinguish the on
wire format of messages with the program representation because the only
place that deals with the wire format of messages are the toJSON and
fromJSON methods on the classes themselves. Message handlers will work
with proper instances of classes instead of raw data, something that
makes them easier to write, and trivial to type with TypeScript.
End-to-end routing also simplifies sending messages that need to do
mulitple hops to reach the destination. And removes the need for having
all messages be specified in plugin's info module, as they can be routed
without having to be parsed completely.
The explicit registration of message handlers is something that I
thought would be tedious boilerplate code that could be automated away.
But experience now shows it to be the opposite. Allthough dull
repetition, the purpose it serves is to link together the code in a way
that humans can easily find. With explicit registration searching the
name of the message handler in the editor will show the registration that
ties it together with the type of message it handles and the kind of
registration. With implicit registration searching the name of the
message handler turns up only the handler with no clue as to what calls
it.
Refine the state flow used in the connector abstractions to better
handle close while connecting and resuming. The new logic is to close
the connection immediately in these two states instead of continuing
trying to connect and then giving up some point later.
For the connectors the handshake state is split into connecting
and resuming, new is replaced by closed, and the closing state is turned
into a boolean flag as it's possible that closing is desired while
connecting, connected or resuming. The connecting state is not present
in the server connector because there's nothing for the server to do in
that connector state.
The timeout logic is completely removed, once a connection attempt is
started for the client it will continue to attempt to connect, attempt
to resume dropped connections and attempt reconnects until either an
authentication error occurs or the client explicitly requests to close
the connection.
A new session timeout is added to control how long to attempt to resume
the connection until it's considered dead and invalidated. This allows
stale connections to give up earlier, and swallow up less data while in
the dropped but not yet invalidated state.
For the client side sending messages while it's connecting has been
changed to throw an error instead of queuing up the message and
(possibly) sending it after the connection is established. Code
shouldn't try to send messages without knowing if the connection it's
trying to send them over is active or not.
Add optional arguments to Request and Event to control which properties
are required to be present in the payload. This allows gracefully
extending the protocol, reducing overhead for optional data, and leaving
properties out for additional behaviour.
Fix the validation loging for sending responses to requests not
functioning due to the message data property being passed incorrectly to
the validator.
Use lib* prefix for the modules impored from the lib package to help
distinguish them more from ordinary variables. Fix up the naming
convention for files to be consistently lowercase_underscore for
JavaScript files.
Split up codebase into the packages @clsterio/lib, @clusterio/master,
@clusterio/slave, and @clusterio/ctl using lerna to manage them. This
will allow deployment to use only the parts needed reducing install
size, and better separate the code into shared library, master, slave
and control.
Add users, roles and permissions and rework the authentication to use
separate user and slave tokens for control and slave connections
respectively.
Add commands for listing permissions, roles and users, and creating,
editing and deleting roles and users.
Send a mapping of the plugins the master server has loaded to slaves
vice versa. Limit the plugins that may be loaded by instances to only
those that the master server has loaded.
Replace socket.io with plain WebSocket using the ws library as it
doesn't really provide any useful tools over plain WebSocket when it
comes to implementing reliable communication that works across
reconnects. The widespread browser support for WebSocket also means
it has little value to add for the web interface over WebSocket.
Validate messages sent over links with the json schema provided from
them. This aids debugging as an exception will be thrown from the code
sending the bad content.
Change Instance class to be a subclass of Link and refactor the
communication to and establisment of instances to use a virtual
connection between the slave and the instance. This is simplifies the
implementation of plugin communication for instances.
Replace InstanceRequest with a forwardTo option to Request which does
the task of forwarding in a much cleaner way.
Replace the sources/targets concept with a links array in the message
definitions. Fixes the problem of the actual links the messages applies
to being ambigious when there's multiple sources and targets.
Remove connection and client subclasses of Link and put the connection
logic into a "connector" class. The connector deals with sending
and receiving messages, handling the connection and reconnection of lost
connections and giving sequence numbers to messages.
This move the logic of the actual connection away from the link
sub-classes, which in turn means the connection should be a lot easier
to mock in tests.
Rework client.js to support running multiple instances at once and be
managed remotely and implement the neccessary communication
infrastructure for this.
Due to circular dependencies on the implementation of this the master
branch is significantly broken after this.
Hornwitser